The Murder of Roger Ackroyd / Убийство Роджера Экройда

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd / Убийство Роджера Экройда

Агата Кристи

Билингва Bestseller

Убит помещик Роджер Экройд, и Эркюль Пуаро начинает расследование, имея вокруг множество подозреваемых – родственников и знакомых Экройда, каждый из которых был заинтересован в его смерти. Повествование ведется от имени доктора Шеппарда, последнего, кто видел помещика живым. С помощью записей доктора Шеппарда Пуаро предстоит вычислить хитроумного преступника…

В формате PDF A4 сохранен издательский макет.

Агата Кристи

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd / Убийство Роджера Экройда

Copyright © 1926 Agatha Christie Limited.

All rights reserved.

© А. Петухов, перевод на русский язык, 2022

© Издание на русском языке, оформление. ООО «Издательство «Эксмо», 2022

Agatha Christie

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

Chapter 1

Dr Sheppard at the Breakfast Table

Mrs Ferrars died on the night of the 16th-17th September – a Thursday. I was sent for at eight o’clock on the morning of friday the 17th. There was nothing to be done. She had been dead some hours.

It was just a few minutes after nine when I reached home once more. I opened the front door with my latchkey, and purposely delayed a few moments in the hall, hanging up my hat and the light overcoat that I had deemed a wise precaution against the chill of an early autumn morning. To tell the truth, I was considerably upset and worried. I am not going to pretend that at that moment I foresaw the events of the next few weeks. I emphatically did not do so. But my instinct told me that there were stirring times ahead.

From the dining-room on my left there came the rattle of tea-cups and the short, dry cough of my sister Caroline.

‘Is that you, James?’ she called.

An unnecessary question, since who else could it be? To tell the truth, it was precisely my sister Caroline who was the cause of my few minutes’ delay. The motto of the mongoose family, so Mr Kipling tells us, is: ‘go and find out.’ If Caroline ever adopts a crest, I should certainly suggest a mongoose rampant. one might omit the first part of the motto. Caroline can do any amount of finding out by sitting placidly at home. I don’t know how she manages it, but there it is. I suspect that the servants and the tradesmen constitute her Intelligence corps. When she goes out, it is not to gather in information, but to spread it. At that, too, she is amazingly expert.